I learned a neat shell trick this week. In both bash and zsh you can use the
circumflex / caret (^) symbol to find & replace a word from the previous
command.
Usage: ^prev^next. It’s best illustrated with examples:
terraform
Instead of running:
terraform init -var-file /path/to/foo.tfvars
terraform plan -var-file /path/to/foo.tfvars
terraform apply -var-file /path/to/foo.tfvars
Run:
terraform init -var-file /path/to/foo.tfvars
^init^plan
^plan^apply
systemd
Instead of running:
sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo systemctl status nginx
Run:
sudo systemctl restart nginx
^restart^status
one observation
zsh will run the substitution right away, whereas bash will allow you
to review and edit the replaced command before running it.